Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He absorbed it, like a black hole. Everybody at Blue Ribbon liked Sumeragi—we invited him to every office party. But I don’t think we ever invited Ito to anything. In my mind I called him the Ice Man. I still had difficulty making eye contact with people, but Ito wouldn’t allow me to divert my gaze. He looked directly into my eyes, down into my soul, and it was hypnotizing. Especially when he felt he had the upper hand. Which was almost always. I’d played golf with him once or twice, and I was struck, even after he’d hit a terrible shot, at the way he turned and looked straight at me as he came off the tee. He wasn’t a good golfer, but he was so confident, so self-assured, he always gave the impression that his ball was sitting 350 yards away, atop a tuft of grass in the center of the fairway. And now I remember this in particular. His golf attire, like his business attire, was meticulous. Mine, of course, was not. During one of our matches, the weather was cool, and I was wearing a shaggy mohair sweater. As I approached the first tee Ito asked under his breath if I planned to go skiing later. I stopped, wheeled. He gave me a half smile. It was the first time I’d ever known the Ice Man to try humor. And the last. This was the man I needed to keep happy. It wouldn’t be easy. But I thought: Always do well in his eyes, and credit will continue to expand, thus enabling Blue Ribbon to expand. Stay in his good graces and all will be well. Otherwise… My obsession with keeping Nissho happy, with keeping Ito happy, combined with my refusal to ease up on growth, created a frantic atmosphere around the office. We struggled to make every payment, to Bank of California, to all our other creditors, but that Nissho payment at the end of the month was like passing a kidney stone. As we’d begin scraping together our available cash, writing checks with barely enough to cover them, we’d start to sweat. The Nissho payment was sometimes so big that we’d be dead broke for a day or two. Then every other creditor would have to wait. Too bad for them, I’d tell Hayes. I know, I know, he’d say. Pay Nissho first . Hayes didn’t like this state of affairs. It was hard on his nerves. “So what do you want to do,” I’d ask him, “slow down?” Which would always draw a guilty smile. Silly question. Occasionally, when our cash reserves were really stretched thin, our account at the bank wouldn’t just be empty, it would be overdrawn. Then Hayes and I would have to go down to the bank and explain the situation to Holland. We’d show him our financial statements, point out that our sales were doubling, that our inventory was flying out the door.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  MY BRAND-NEW relationship with Nissho was promising, but it was brand new, and who would dare predict how it might evolve? I’d once felt the relationship with Onitsuka was promising, and look where that stood. Nissho was infusing me with cash, but I couldn’t let that make me complacent. I needed to develop as many sources of cash as possible. Which brought me back to the idea of a public offering. I didn’t think I could withstand the disappointment of a second failed offering, so I plotted with Hayes to ensure that this one would work. We decided that the first offering hadn’t been aggressive enough. We hadn’t sold ourselves. This time we hired a hard-driving salesman. Also, this time we decided not to sell stocks, but convertible debentures. If business truly is war without bullets, then debentures are war bonds. The public loans you money, and in exchange you give them quasi-stock in your... cause. The stock is quasi because debenture holders are strongly encouraged, and incentivized, to hold their shares for five years. After that, they can convert the shares to common stock or get their money back with interest. With our new plan, and our gung-ho salesman, we announced in June 1971 that Blue Ribbon would be offering two hundred thousand shares of debentures, at one dollar per, and this time the shares sold fast. One of the first to buy was my friend Cale, who didn’t hesitate to cut a check for ten thousand dollars, a princely sum. “Buck,” he said, “I was there at the start, I’ll be there at the bitter end.” CANADA WAS A letdown. The factory’s leather football shoe was pretty, but in cold weather its sole split and cracked. Irony upon irony—a shoe made in a factory called Canada, which couldn’t take the cold. Then again, maybe it was our fault. Using a soccer shoe for football. Maybe we were asking for it. The quarterback for Notre Dame wore a pair that season, and it was a thrill to see him trot onto that hallowed gridiron at South Bend in a pair of Nikes. Until those Nikes disintegrated. (Just like the Irish did that year.) Job One, therefore, was finding a factory that could make sturdier, more weather-resistant shoes. Nissho said they could help. They were only too happy to help. They were beefing up their commodities department, so Sumeragi had a wealth of information about factories around the world. He’d also recently hired a consultant, a bona fide shoe wizard, who’d been a disciple of Jonas Senter. I’d never heard of Senter, but Sumeragi assured me the man was a genuine, head-to-toe shoe dog. I’d heard this phrase a few times. Shoe dogs were people who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes. Lifers used the phrase cheerfully to describe other lifers, men and women who had toiled so long and hard in the shoe trade, they thought and talked about nothing else.

• From Educated (2018)

  It would take me half an hour that night to dig the black dirt out of my nostrils and ears. I didn’t feel much like an object of desire or temptation. I felt like a human forklift. How could an inch of skin matter? —I WAS HOARDING MY PAYCHECKS, in case I needed the money for tuition. Dad noticed and started charging me for small things. Mother had gone back to buying insurance after the second car accident, and Dad said I should pay my share. So I did. Then he wanted more, for registration. “These Government fees will break you,” he said as I handed him the cash. That satisfied Dad until my test results arrived. I returned from the junkyard to find a white envelope. I tore it open, staining the page with grease, and looked past the individual scores to the composite. Twenty-two. My heart was beating loud, happy beats. It wasn’t a twenty-seven, but it opened up possibilities. Maybe Idaho State. I showed Mother the score and she told Dad. He became agitated, then he shouted that it was time I moved out. “If she’s old enough to pull a paycheck, she’s old enough to pay rent,” Dad yelled. “And she can pay it somewhere else.” At first Mother argued with him, but within minutes he’d convinced her. I’d been standing in the kitchen, weighing my options, thinking about how I’d just given Dad four hundred dollars, a third of my savings, when Mother turned to me and said, “Do you think you could move out by Friday?” Something broke in me, a dam or a levee. I felt tossed about, unable to hold myself in place. I screamed but the screams were strangled; I was drowning. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment, and even if I could the only apartments for rent were in town. Then I’d need a car. I had only eight hundred dollars. I sputtered all this at Mother, then ran to my room and slammed the door. She knocked moments later. “I know you think we’re being unfair,” she said, “but when I was your age I was living on my own, getting ready to marry your father.” “You were married at sixteen?” I said. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You are not sixteen.” I stared at her. She stared at me. “Yes, I am. I’m sixteen.” She looked me over. “You’re at least twenty.” She cocked her head. “Aren’t you?” We were silent. My heart pounded in my chest. “I turned sixteen in September,” I said. “Oh.” Mother bit her lip, then she stood and smiled. “Well, don’t worry about it then. You can stay. Don’t know what your dad was thinking, really. I guess we forgot. Hard to keep track of how old you kids are.” —SHAWN RETURNED TO WORK, hobbling unsteadily. He wore an Aussie outback hat, which was large, wide-brimmed, and made of chocolate-brown oiled leather.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  “No more shoes to drop.” ITO AND SUMERAGI were back at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, and took up their places in the conference room. I went around the office and told everyone, “It’s almost over. Just hang on. Just a little longer. There’s nothing else for them to find.” Not long after they’d arrived, Sumeragi stood, stretched, and looked as if he was going to step outside for a smoke. He motioned to me. A word? We walked down the hall to my office. “I fear this audit is worse than you realize,” he said. “What—why?” I said. “Because,” he said, “I delayed… I sometimes did not put invoices through right away.” “You did what now?” I said. Hangdog, Sumeragi explained that he’d been worried about us, that he’d tried to help us manage our credit problems by hiding Nissho’s invoices in a drawer. He’d held them back, not sent them on through to his accounting people, until he felt we had enough cash to pay them, which in turn made it appear on the Nissho books that their credit exposure to us was much lower than it actually was. In other words, all this time we’d been stressing about paying Nissho on time, and we were never paying them on time, because Sumeragi wasn’t invoicing us on time, thinking he was helping. “This is bad,” I said to Sumeragi. “Yes,” he said, relighting a Lucky Strike, “is bad, Buck. Is very very bad.” I marched him back to the conference room and together we told Ito, who was, of course, appalled. At first he suspected Sumeragi of acting at our behest. I couldn’t blame him. A conspiracy was the most logical explanation. In his place I would’ve thought the same thing. But Sumeragi, who looked as if he was about to prostrate himself before Ito, swore on his life that he’d been acting independently, that he’d gone rogue. “Why you do such a thing?” Ito demanded. “Because I think Blue Ribbon could be great success,” Sumeragi said, “maybe $20 million account. I shake hands many times with Mr. Steve Prefontaine. I shake hands with Mr. Bill Bowerman. I go many times to Trail Blazer game with Mr. Phil Knight. I even pack orders at warehouse. Nike is my business child . Always it is nice to see one’s business child grow.” “So then,” Ito said, “you hide invoices because… you… like these men ?” Deeply ashamed, Sumeragi bowed his head. “Hai,” he said. “Hai.” I HAD NO idea what Ito might do. But I couldn’t stick around to find out. I suddenly had another problem. My two angriest creditors had just landed. Shesky from Bostonian and Manowitz from Mano were both on the ground, in Portland, headed our way. Quickly, I gathered everyone in my office and gave them their final orders. “Folks—we’re going to Code Red. This building, this forty-five-hundred-square-foot building, is about to be swarming with people to whom we owe money.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Wrapped around the house was a wide wooden porch, with several camp chairs—he’d built that by himself, too. It afforded sweeping views of the McKenzie River, and it wouldn’t have taken much convincing to have me believing Bowerman had laid the river between its banks as well. Now I saw Bowerman standing on the porch. He squinted and strode down the steps toward my car. I don’t remember a lot of small talk as he got in. I just slammed it into drive and set a course for his lawyer’s house. Besides being Bowerman’s lawyer and best friend, Jaqua was his next-door neighbor. He owned fifteen hundred acres at the base of Bowerman’s mountain, prime bottomland right on the McKenzie. Driving there, I couldn’t imagine how this was going to be good for me. I got along fine with Bowerman, sure, and we had ourselves a deal, but lawyers always messed things up. Lawyers specialized in messing things up. And best friend–lawyers...? Bowerman, meanwhile, was doing nothing to put my mind at ease. He sat ramrod straight and watched the scenery. Amid the booming silence I kept my eyes on the road and mulled over Bowerman’s eccentric personality, which carried over to everything he did. He always went against the grain. Always. For example, he was the first college coach in America to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work. But when he worked you, brother, he worked you. Bowerman’s strategy for running the mile was simple. Set a fast pace for the first two laps, run the third as hard as you can, then triple your speed on the fourth. There was a Zen-like quality to this strategy, because it was impossible. And yet it worked. Bowerman coached more sub-four- minute milers than anybody, ever. I wasn’t one of them, however, and this day I wondered if I was going to fall short once again in that crucial final lap. We found Jaqua standing out on his porch. I’d met him before, at a track meet or two, but I’d never gotten a really good look at him. Though bespectacled, and sneaking up on middle age, he didn’t square with my idea of a lawyer. He was too sturdy, too well made. I learned later that he’d been a star tailback in high school, and one of the best hundred-meter men ever at Pomona College. He still had that telltale athletic power. It came right through his handshake. “Buckaroo,” he said, grabbing me by the arm and guiding me into his living room, “I was going to wear your shoes today but I got cow shit all over ’em!” The day was typical for Oregon in January. Along with the spitting rain, a deep, wet cold permeated everything. We arranged ourselves on chairs around Jaqua’s

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Nordstrom, Kinney, Athlete’s Foot, United Sporting Goods, and others, to squeeze more credit out of Nissho and the Bank of California. Especially Nissho. The retailers were skeptical, of course. But I begged. And when that didn’t work I made bold predictions. I told them that this program, which we were calling “Futures,” was the future, for us and everyone else, so they’d better get on board. Sooner rather than later. I was persuasive because I was desperate. If we could just take the lid off our annual growth limits. But retailers continued to resist. Over and over we heard: “You newbies at Nike don’t understand the shoe industry. This new idea will never fly.” My bargaining position was suddenly improved when we rolled out several eye-popping new shoes, which customers were sure to demand. The Bruin was already popular, with its outsoles and uppers cooked together to give a more stable ride. Now we debuted an enhanced version, with bright green suede uppers. (Paul Silas of the Boston Celtics had agreed to wear a pair.) Plus, two new Cortezes, a Leather and a Nylon, both of which figured to be our bestselling shoes yet. At last, a few retailers signed on. The program started to gain traction. Before long, the stragglers and holdouts were desperate to be included. SEPTEMBER 13, 1973. My fifth wedding anniversary. Once again Penny woke me in the middle of the night to say she wasn’t feeling well. But this time, on the drive to the hospital, I had more on my mind than just the baby. Futures program. Pair count. Pending trial. So of course I got lost. I circled back, retraced my steps. My brow beginning to bead with sweat, I turned down a street and saw the hospital up ahead. Thank goodness. Once again they wheeled Penny away, and once again I waited, and wilted, in the bullpen. This time I tried to do some paperwork, and when the doctor came and found me, and told me I had another son, I thought: Two sons. A pair of sons. The ultimate pair count. I went to Penny’s room and met my new boy, whom we named Travis. Then I did a bad thing. Smiling, Penny said the doctors told her she could go home after two days, instead of the three they’d required after Matthew. Whoa, I said, hold on there, the insurance is willing to pay for another day in the hospital—what’s your hurry? Might as well kick back, relax. Take advantage. She lowered her head, cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s playing and where is it?” she said. “Oregon,” I whispered. “Arizona State.” She sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Phil. Go.”

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  1971 “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” Woodell said. He wheeled into my office and handed me the telex. Ki-tami had accepted my invitation. He was coming to Portland to spend a few days. Then he was going to make a wider tour of the United States, for reasons he declined to share. “Visiting other potential distributors,” I said to Woodell. He nodded. It was March 1971. We vowed that Kitami was going to have the time of his life, that he would return home feeling love in his heart for America, Oregon, Blue Ribbon—and me. When we were done with him he’d be incapable of doing business with anyone else. And so, we agreed, the visit should close on a high note, with a gala dinner at the home of our prize asset—Bowerman. IN MOUNTING THIS charm offensive, naturally I enlisted Penny. Together we met Kitami’s flight, and together we whisked him straight to the Oregon coast, to her parents’ oceanfront cottage, where we’d spent our wedding night. Kitami had a companion with him, a sort of bag carrier, personal assistant, amanuensis, named Hiraku Iwano. He was just a kid, naïve, innocent, in his early twenties, and Penny had him eating out of her hand before we hit Sunset Highway. We both slaved to give the two men an idyllic Pacific Northwest weekend. We sat on the porch with them and breathed in the sea air. We took them for long walks on the beach. We fed them world-class salmon and poured them glass after glass of good French wine. We tried to focus most of our attention on Kitami, but both Penny and I found it easier to talk to Iwano, who read books and seemed guileless. Kitami seemed like a man who was importing guile by the boatload. Monday, bright and early, I drove Kitami back to Portland, to First National Bank. Just as I was determined to charm him on this trip, I thought that he could be helpful in charming Wallace, that he could vouch for Blue Ribbon and make credit easier to get. White met us in the lobby and walked us into a conference room. I looked around. “Where’s Wallace?” I asked. “Ah,” White said, “he won’t be able to join us today.” What? That was the whole point of visiting the bank. I wanted Wallace to hear Kitami’s ringing endorsement. Oh well, I thought—good cop will just have to relay the endorsement to bad cop. I said a few preliminary words, expressed confidence that Kitami could bolster First National’s faith in Blue Ribbon, then turned the floor over to Kitami, who scowled and did the one thing guaranteed to make my life harder. “Why do you not give my friends more money?” he said to White. “W-w-what?” White said. “Why do you refuse to extend credit to Blue Ribbon?” Kitami said, pounding his fist on the table. “Well now—” White said. Kitami cut him off. “What kind of bank is this?

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  And in fact I did hire someone else. A former distance runner, of course. But he changed his mind, backed out, just days after agreeing to go. So, frustrated, distracted, mired in a cycle of anxiety and procrastination, I turned to the much simpler problem of finding someone to replace Johnson at the store in Santa Monica. I asked John Bork, a high school track coach in Los Angeles, a friend of a friend. He jumped at the chance. He couldn’t have been more eager. How could I have known he’d be quite so eager? The next morning he appeared at Johnson’s store and announced that he was the new boss. “The new—what?” Johnson said. “I’ve been hired to take over for you when you go back east,” Bork said. “When I go—where?” Johnson said, reaching for the phone. I didn’t handle that conversation well, either. I told Johnson that, haha, hey, man, I was just about to call you. I said I was sorry he’d heard the news that way, how awkward, and I explained that I’d been forced to lie to Onitsuka and claim we already had an office on the East Coast. Thus, we were in one heck of a jam. The shoes would soon be on the water, an enormous shipment steaming for New York, and no one but Johnson could handle the task of claiming those shoes and setting up an office. The fate of Blue Ribbon rested on his shoulders. Johnson was flabbergasted. Then furious. Then freaked. All in the space of one minute. So I got on a plane and flew down to visit him at his store. HE DIDN’T WANT to live on the East Coast, he told me. He loved California. He’d lived in California all his life. He could go running year-round in California, and running, as I knew, was all to Johnson. How was he supposed to go running during those bitter cold winters back east? On and on it went.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  We ate a few wonderful Japanese dinners, and visited a few old friends, and after two or three days, rested and ready, we were all set to go. Our flight to Beijing was the next morning. We had one last meal together in the Ginza, washed down with several cocktails, and everyone turned in early. I took a hot shower, phoned home, and poured myself into bed. A few hours later I woke to frantic knocking. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. Two a.m. “Who’s there?” “David Chang! Let me in!” I went to the door and found Chang looking very un-Chang. Rumpled, harried, regimental tie askew. “Hayes isn’t going!” he said. “What are you talking about?” “Hayes is downstairs in the bar and he says he can’t do it, he cannot get on that plane.” “Why not?” “He’s having some kind of panic attack.” “Yes. He has phobias.” “What kind of phobias?” “He has… all the phobias.” I started to get dressed, to go down to the bar. Then I remembered who it was we were dealing with. “Go to bed,” I said to Chang. “Hayes will be there in the morning.” “But—” “He’ll be there.” First thing in the morning, dull-eyed, deathly pale, Hayes was standing in the lobby. Of course, he made sure to pack enough “medicine” for his next attack. Hours later, going through customs in Beijing, I heard behind me a great commotion. The room was bare, with plywood partitions, and on the other side of one partition several Chinese officers were shouting. I went around the partition and found two officers, agitated, pointing at Hayes and his open suitcase. I walked over. Strasser and Chang walked over. Lying atop Hayes’s giant underwear were twelve quarts of vodka. No one said anything for the longest time. Then Hayes heaved a sigh. “That’s for me,” he said. “You guys are on your own.” OVER THE NEXT twelve days we traveled all over China, in the company of government handlers. They took us to Tiananmen Square and made sure we stopped a long time in front of the giant portrait of Chairman Mao, who had died four years earlier. They took us to the Forbidden City. They took us to the Ming tombs. We were fascinated, of course, and curious—too curious. We made our handlers excruciatingly uncomfortable with all our questions. At one stop I looked around and saw hundreds of people in Mao suits and flimsy black shoes, which seemed made of construction paper. But a few children were wearing canvas sneakers. That gave me hope. What we wanted to see, of course, were factories. Our handlers reluctantly agreed. They took us by train to remote towns, far from Beijing, where we saw vast and terrifying industrial complexes, small metropolises of factories, each one more outdated than the last. Old, rusted, decrepit, these factories made Hayes’s ancient Saco ruin look state-of-the-art.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Tick it off every time your inner critic, inner worrywart, or inner ruminator speaks up. Your total for the day counts up the number of times your body and mind have tightened into a defensive, closed-off stance. True, some of this inner negativity is inevitable. There is no such thing as a negativity-free life. Yet just like your number of reps in weightlifting, the number of times that you speak negatively to yourself each day builds up a hardness in you. Maybe speaking harshly or pessimistically to yourself is not your problem. Perhaps instead, your own particular modus operandi is to praise yourself excessively, giving yourself inner high fives and pats on the back for any accomplishment, while at the same time turning a blind eye to your shortcomings. Whereas other people can’t seem to shake the habit of self-denigration and self-flagellation, focusing too much as they do on the negative, maybe your love-limiting habit comes in the form of excessive self-praise and self-aggrandizement, focusing too exclusively on the positive. Sound surprising? If so, it may be helpful to remind yourself that knowing a little bit about virtually any topic can sometimes be a dangerous thing. This is certainly true for positive psychology. This fact often takes people by surprise because, as a scientific specialty, positive psychology seems utterly innocuous. What could be dangerous about trying to be happy? Yet if positive psychology is absorbed solely at a surface level, it can sometimes morph into a way of being in the world that is as thwarting to love as is persistent self-criticism or self-doubt. Appreciating this danger requires absorbing the subtle differences between what I call eyes-open positivity and eyes-closed positivity. True positivity springs from your full embodiment of positive emotions. It comes from a deeply felt sense of safety. By nature’s design, it expands you. Your body relaxes into it. Your torso literally stretches outward. Muscle tension melts away. With your torso expanded and your head held high, you see more of what surrounds you. Your peripheral vision expands, allowing you to take in more detail than you typically do. Your mind follows suit and it, too, expands. Conceptual boundaries, once sharply delineated and guarded, begin to soften, allowing objects and ideas that at one time seemed altogether separate to melt into a common pool of oneness. When positivity is genuine—when it is truly embodied and heartfelt—it becomes virtually inseparable from this sort of physical, sensory, conceptual—and indeed spiritual—openness. I call this eyes-open positivity . When positivity is truly genuine, your eyes, mind, body, and heart blossom open, wide open. Then there’s another form of positivity altogether, a kind that you put on, like an artfully applied mask. This form of positivity can be well-meaning, to be sure. People often come to it having learned a bit about the science of positive psychology, enough to make them resolve to be more positive themselves. Despite this good intention, this form of positivity can be a slippery form of self-deception.

• From Educated (2018)

  It took some effort, but I managed to hide from Drew how poorly I was doing, or at least I thought I did. I probably didn’t. He was, after all, the one chasing me through his flat when I awoke in the middle of the night, screaming and sprinting, with no idea where I was but a desperate need to escape it. We left Amman and drove south. We were in a Bedouin camp in the Jordanian desert on the day the navy SEALs killed bin Laden. Drew spoke Arabic, and when the news broke he spent hours in conversation with our guides. “He’s no Muslim,” they told Drew as we sat on cold sand watching the dying flames of a campfire. “He does not understand Islam, or he would not do the terrible things he has done.” I watched Drew talk with the Bedouins, heard the strange, smooth sounds falling from his lips, and was struck by the implausibility of my presence there. When the twin towers had fallen ten years before, I had never heard of Islam. Now I was drinking sugary tea with Zalabia Bedouins and squatting on a sand drift in Wadi Rum, the Valley of the Moon, less than twenty miles from the Saudi Arabian border. The distance—physical and mental—that had been traversed in the last decade nearly stopped my breath, and I wondered if perhaps I had changed too much. All my studying, reading, thinking, traveling, had it transformed me into someone who no longer belonged anywhere? I thought of the girl who, knowing nothing beyond her junkyard and her mountain, had stared at a screen, watching as two planes sailed into strange white pillars. Her classroom was a heap of junk. Her textbooks, slates of scrap. And yet she had something precious that I—despite all my opportunities, or maybe because of them—did not. —I RETURNED TO ENGLAND, where I continued to unravel. My first week back in Cambridge, I awoke nearly every night in the street, having run there, shouting, asleep. I developed headaches that lasted for days. My dentist said I was grinding my teeth. My skin broke out so severely that twice perfect strangers stopped me in the street and asked if I was having an allergic reaction. No, I said. I always look like this. One evening, I got into an argument with a friend about something trivial, and before I knew what was happening I had pressed myself into the wall and was hugging my knees to my chest, trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my body. My friend rushed toward me to help and I screamed. It was an hour before I could let her touch me, before I could will myself away from the wall. So that’s a panic attack, I thought the next morning. Soon after, I sent a letter to my father. I’m not proud of that letter. It’s full of rage, a fractious child screaming, “I hate you” at a parent.

• From Educated (2018)

  In the final paragraph, Mother described the birth of Emily’s second child, a daughter, who had been born a month before. Mother had midwifed the child. The birth had taken place at home and, according to Mother, Emily had nearly bled to death before they could get to a hospital. Mother finished the story by testifying: God had worked through her hands that night, she said. The birth was a testament of His power. I remembered the drama of Peter’s birth: how he’d slipped out of Emily weighing little more than a pound; how he’d been such a shocking shade of gray, they’d thought he was dead; how they’d fought through a snowstorm to the hospital in town, only to be told it wasn’t enough, and there were no choppers flying; how two ambulances had been dispatched to McKay-Dee in Ogden. That a woman with this medical history, a woman so obviously high-risk, should be advised to attempt a second birth at home seemed reckless to the point of delusion. If the first fall was God’s will, whose was the second? I was still wondering at the birth of my niece when Erin’s response appeared. You are right about Tara, she said. She is lost without faith. Erin told Mother that my doubting myself—my writing to her, Erin, to ask if I might be mistaken, if my memories might be false—was evidence that my soul was in jeopardy, that I couldn’t be trusted: She is building her life on fear. I will pray for her . Erin ended the message by praising my mother’s skill as a midwife. You are a true hero, she wrote. I closed the browser and stared at the wallpaper behind the screen. It was the same floral print from my childhood. For how long had I been dreaming of seeing it? I had come to reclaim that life, to save it. But there was nothing here to save, nothing to grasp. There was only shifting sand, shifting loyalties, shifting histories. I remembered the dream, the maze. I remembered the walls made of grain sacks and ammunition boxes, of my father’s fears and paranoias, his scriptures and prophecies. I had wanted to escape the maze with its disorienting switchbacks, its ever-modulating pathways, to find the precious thing. But now I understood: the precious thing, that was the maze. That’s all that was left of the life I’d had here: a puzzle whose rules I would never understand, because they were not rules at all but a kind of cage meant to enclose me. I could stay, and search for what had been home, or I could go, now, before the walls shifted and the way out was shut. Mother was sliding biscuits into the oven when I entered the kitchen. I looked around, mentally searching the house. What do I need from this place? There was only one thing: my memories. I found them under my bed, in a box, where I had left them.

• From Educated (2018)

  Over the years I’d heard many rumors about my parents: that they were millionaires, that they were building a fortress on the mountain, that they had hidden away enough food to last decades. The most interesting, by far, were the stories about Dad hiring and firing employees. The valley had never recovered from the recession; people needed work. My parents were one of the largest employers in the county, but from what I could tell Dad’s mental state made it difficult for him to maintain employees long-term: when he had a fit of paranoia, he tended to fire people with little cause. Months before, he had fired Diane Hardy, Rob’s ex-wife, the same Rob who’d come to fetch us after the second accident. Diane and Rob had been friends with my parents for twenty years. Until Dad fired Diane. It was perhaps in another such fit of paranoia that Dad fired my mother’s sister Angie. Angie had spoken to Mother, believing her sister would never treat family that way. When I was a child it had been Mother’s business; now it was hers and Dad’s together. But at this test of whose it was really, my father won: Angie was dismissed. It is difficult to piece together what happened next, but from what I later learned, Angie filed for unemployment benefits, and when the Department of Labor called my parents to confirm that she had been terminated, Dad lost what little reason remained to him. It was not the Department of Labor on the phone, he said, but the Department of Homeland Security, pretending to be the Department of Labor. Angie had put his name on the terrorist watch list, he said. The Government was after him now—after his money and his guns and his fuel. It was Ruby Ridge all over again. I pulled off the highway and onto the gravel, then stepped out of the car and gazed up at Buck’s Peak. It was clear immediately that at least some of the rumors were true—for one, that my parents were making huge sums of money. The house was massive. The home I’d grown up in had had five bedrooms; now it had been expanded in all directions and looked as though it had at least forty. It would only be a matter of time, I thought, before Dad started using the money to prepare for the End of Days. I imagined the roof lined with solar panels, laid out like a deck of cards. “We need to be self-sufficient,” I imagined Dad would say as he dragged the panels across his titanic house. In the coming year, Dad would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars buying equipment and scouring the mountain for water. He didn’t want to be dependent on the Government, and he knew Buck’s Peak must have water, if he could only find it.

• From Educated (2018)

  Instead I pictured Sunday school, which I attended each week and which I hated. A boy named Aaron had told all the girls that I couldn’t read because I didn’t go to school, and now none of them would talk to me. “Dad said I can go?” I said. “No,” Grandma said. “But we’ll be long gone by the time he realizes you’re missing.” She set my bowl in the sink and gazed out the window. Grandma was a force of nature—impatient, aggressive, self-possessed. To look at her was to take a step back. She dyed her hair black and this intensified her already severe features, especially her eyebrows, which she smeared on each morning in thick, inky arches. She drew them too large and this made her face seem stretched. They were also drawn too high and draped the rest of her features into an expression of boredom, almost sarcasm. “You should be in school,” she said. “Won’t Dad just make you bring me back?” I said. “Your dad can’t make me do a damned thing.” Grandma stood, squaring herself. “If he wants you, he’ll have to come get you.” She hesitated, and for a moment looked ashamed. “I talked to him yesterday. He won’t be able to fetch you back for a long while. He’s behind on that shed he’s building in town. He can’t pack up and drive to Arizona, not while the weather holds and he and the boys can work long days.” Grandma’s scheme was well plotted. Dad always worked from sunup until sundown in the weeks before the first snow, trying to stockpile enough money from hauling scrap and building barns to outlast the winter, when jobs were scarce. Even if his mother ran off with his youngest child, he wouldn’t be able to stop working, not until the forklift was encased in ice. “I’ll need to feed the animals before we go,” I said. “He’ll notice I’m gone for sure if the cows break through the fence looking for water.” —I DIDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I sat on the kitchen floor and watched the hours tick by. One A.M . Two. Three. At four I stood and put my boots by the back door. They were caked in manure, and I was sure Grandma wouldn’t let them into her car. I pictured them on her porch, abandoned, while I ran off shoeless to Arizona. I imagined what would happen when my family discovered I was missing. My brother Richard and I often spent whole days on the mountain, so it was likely no one would notice until sundown, when Richard came home for dinner and I didn’t. I pictured my brothers pushing out the door to search for me. They’d try the junkyard first, hefting iron slabs in case some stray sheet of metal had shifted and pinned me. Then they’d move outward, sweeping the farm, crawling up trees and into the barn attic. Finally, they’d turn to the mountain.

• From Educated (2018)

  “You need to deliver a baby on your own.” Mother shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “Besides, who would hire me when they could hire Judy?” She’d jinxed herself, thrown her gauntlet before God. Soon after, Maria told me her father had a new job in Wyoming. “Mom says your mother should take over,” Maria said. A thrilling image took shape in my imagination, of me in Maria’s role, the midwife’s daughter, confident, knowledgeable. But when I turned to look at my mother standing next to me, the image turned to vapor. Midwifery was not illegal in the state of Idaho, but it had not yet been sanctioned. If a delivery went wrong, a midwife might face charges for practicing medicine without a license; if things went very wrong, she could face criminal charges for manslaughter, even prison time. Few women would take such a risk, so midwives were scarce: on the day Judy left for Wyoming, Mother became the only midwife for a hundred miles. Women with swollen bellies began coming to the house and begging Mother to deliver their babies. Mother crumpled at the thought. One woman sat on the edge of our faded yellow sofa, her eyes cast downward, as she explained that her husband was out of work and they didn’t have money for a hospital. Mother sat quietly, eyes focused, lips tight, her whole expression momentarily solid. Then the expression dissolved and she said, in her small voice, “I’m not a midwife, just an assistant.” The woman returned several times, perching on our sofa again and again, describing the uncomplicated births of her other children. Whenever Dad saw the woman’s car from the junkyard, he’d often come into the house, quietly, through the back door, on the pretense of getting water; then he’d stand in the kitchen taking slow, silent sips, his ear bent toward the living room. Each time the woman left Dad could hardly contain his excitement, so that finally, succumbing to either the woman’s desperation or to Dad’s elation, or to both, Mother gave way. The birth went smoothly. Then the woman had a friend who was also pregnant, and Mother delivered her baby as well. Then that woman had a friend. Mother took on an assistant. Before long she was delivering so many babies that Audrey and I spent our days driving around the valley with her, watching her conduct prenatal exams and prescribe herbs. She became our teacher in a way that, because we rarely held school at home, she’d never been before. She explained every remedy and palliative. If So-and-so’s blood pressure was high, she should be given hawthorn to stabilize the collagen and dilate the coronary blood vessels. If Mrs. Someone-or-other was having premature contractions, she needed a bath in ginger to increase the supply of oxygen to the uterus. Midwifing changed my mother.

• From Educated (2018)

  The morning of the exam, the professor instructed everyone to take out their blue books. I barely had time to wonder what a blue book was before everyone produced one from their bags. The motion was fluid, synchronized, as if they had practiced it. I was the only dancer on the stage who seemed to have missed rehearsal. I asked Vanessa if she had a spare, and she did. I opened it, expecting a multiple-choice exam, but it was blank. The windows were shuttered; the projector flickered on, displaying a painting. We had sixty seconds to write the work’s title and the artist’s full name. My mind produced only a dull buzz. This continued through several questions: I sat completely still, giving no answers at all. A Caravaggio flickered onto the screen—Judith Beheading Holofernes . I stared at the image, that of a young girl calmly drawing a sword toward her body, pulling the blade through a man’s neck as she might have pulled a string through cheese. I’d beheaded chickens with Dad, clutching their scabby legs while he raised the ax and brought it down with a loud thwack, then tightening my grip, holding on with all I had, when the chicken convulsed with death, scattering feathers and spattering my jeans with blood. Remembering the chickens, I wondered at the plausibility of Caravaggio’s scene: no one had that look on their face—that tranquil, disinterested expression—when taking off something’s head. I knew the painting was by Caravaggio but I remembered only the surname and even that I couldn’t spell. I was certain the title was Judith Beheading Someone but could not have produced Holofernes even if it had been my neck behind the blade. Thirty seconds left. Perhaps I could score a few points if I could just get something—anything—on the page, so I sounded out the name phonetically: “Carevajio.” That didn’t look right. One of the letters was doubled up, I remembered, so I scratched that out and wrote “Carrevagio.” Wrong again. I auditioned different spellings, each worse than the last. Twenty seconds. Next to me, Vanessa was scribbling steadily. Of course she was. She belonged here. Her handwriting was neat, and I could read what she’d written: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. And next to it, in equally pristine print, Judith Beheading Holofernes . Ten seconds. I copied the text, not including Caravaggio’s full name because, in a selective display of integrity, I decided that would be cheating. The projector flashed to the next slide. I glanced at Vanessa’s paper a few more times during the exam but it was hopeless. I couldn’t copy her essays, and I lacked the factual and stylistic know-how to compose my own. In the absence of skill or knowledge, I must have scribbled down whatever occurred to me.

• From Educated (2018)

  I was fifteen and I felt it, felt the race I was running with time. My body was changing, bloating, swelling, stretching, bulging. I wished it would stop, but it seemed my body was no longer mine. It belonged to itself now, and cared not at all how I felt about these strange alterations, about whether I wanted to stop being a child, and become something else. That something else thrilled and frightened me. I’d always known that I would grow differently than my brothers, but I’d never thought about what that might mean. Now it was all I thought about. I began to look for cues to understand this difference, and once I started looking, I found them everywhere. One Sunday afternoon, I helped Mother prepare a roast for dinner. Dad was kicking off his shoes and loosening his tie. He’d been talking since we left the church. “That hemline was three inches above Lori’s knee,” Dad said. “What’s a woman thinking when she puts on a dress like that?” Mother nodded absently while chopping a carrot. She was used to this particular lecture. “And Jeanette Barney,” Dad said. “If a woman wears a blouse that low-cut, she ought not bend over.” Mother agreed. I pictured the turquoise blouse Jeanette had worn that day. The neckline was only an inch below her collarbone, but it was loose-fitting, and I imagined that if she bent it would give a full view. As I thought this I felt anxious, because although a tighter blouse would have made Jeanette’s bending more modest, the tightness itself would have been less modest. Righteous women do not wear tight clothing. Other women do that. I was trying to figure out exactly how much tightness would be the right amount when Dad said, “Jeanette waited to bend for that hymnal until I was looking. She wanted me to see.” Mother made a disapproving tsk sound with her teeth, then quartered a potato. This speech would stay with me in a way that a hundred of its precursors had not. I would remember the words very often in the years that followed, and the more I considered them, the more I worried that I might be growing into the wrong sort of woman. Sometimes I could scarcely move through a room, I was so preoccupied with not walking or bending or crouching like them . But no one had ever taught me the modest way to bend over, so I knew I was probably doing it the bad way. —SHAWN AND I AUDITIONED for a melodrama at Worm Creek. I saw Charles at the first rehearsal and spent half the evening working up the courage to talk to him. When I did, finally, he confided in me that he was in love with Sadie. This wasn’t ideal, but it did give us something to talk about. Shawn and I drove home together. He sat behind the wheel, glaring at the road as if it had wronged him.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I BEGAN, MORE or less, commuting to Washington. Every month I’d meet with politicians, lobbyists, consultants, bureaucrats, anyone who might help. I immersed myself in that strange political underworld, and read everything I could about customs. I even skimmed WASP, Volume I. Nothing was working. Late in the summer of 1979 Werschkul got me an appointment with one of Oregon’s senators, Mark O. Hatfield. Well respected, well connected, Hatfield was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. With one phone call he might be able to get the bureau-kraken’s bosses to clear up that $25 million discrepancy. So I spent days preparing, studying for the meeting, and huddled several times with Woodell and Hayes. “Hatfield’s just got to see it our way,” Hayes said. “He’s respected on both sides of the aisle. Saint Mark, some call him. He has no truck with abuse of power. He went toe-to-toe with Nixon on Watergate. And he fought like a tiger to get funding for dams on the Columbia.” “Sounds like our best shot,” Woodell said. “Maybe our last shot,” I said. The night I arrived in Washington, Werschkul and I had dinner and rehearsed. Like two actors running lines, we went through every possible argument Hatfield might throw at us. Werschkul kept referring to WASP, Volume I. Sometimes he’d even reference Volume II. “Forget that,” I said. “Let’s just keep it simple.” The next morning we walked slowly up the steps of the U.S. Senate Office Building, and I looked up at that magnificent façade, at all the columns and all the shiny marble, and the big flag overhead, and I had to pause. I thought of the Parthenon, the Temple of Nike. I knew that this, too, would be one of the seminal moments of my life. No matter how it turned out, I didn’t want to let it pass without embracing it, acknowledging it. So I stared at the columns. I admired the sunlight bouncing off the marble. I stood there for the longest time… “You coming?” Werschkul said. It was a blazing summer day. My hand, the one gripping my briefcase, was drenched with sweat. My suit was soaked through. I looked as if I’d walked through a rainstorm. How was I going to meet a U.S. senator in this condition? How was I going to shake his hand? How was I going to think straight? We entered Hatfield’s outer office, and one of his aides led us into a waiting room. A bullpen. I thought of the births of my two sons. I thought of Penny. I thought of my parents. I thought of Bowerman. I thought of Grelle. I thought of Pre. I thought of Kitami. I thought of James the Just. “The senator will see you now,” the aide said.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Hayes stared at me. I stared at the speaker. Cracking silence. We could hear heavy breaths, pops, scrapes. Papers being shuffled. I closed my eyes and let all that white noise wash over me. I relived every negotiation in my life to that point. So, Dad, you remember that Crazy Idea I had at Stanford...? Gentlemen, I represent Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon. You see, Dot, I love Penny. And Penny loves me. And if things continue in this vein, I see us building a life together. “I’m sorry,” the loud voice said angrily. “We’ll have to call you back.” Click. We sat. We said nothing. I took long deep breaths. The clerk’s face slowly melted. Five minutes passed. Fifteen minutes. Sweat ran down Hayes’s forehead and neck. The phone rang. The clerk looked at us, to make sure we were ready. We nodded. He pressed the button on the speaker. “Gentlemen,” the loud voice said. “We have a deal. We’ll send it out to market this Friday.” I drove home. I remember the boys were outside playing. Penny was standing in the kitchen. “How was your day?” she said. “Hm. Okay.” “Good.” “We got our price.” She smiled. “Of course you did.” I went for a long run. Then I took a hot, hot shower. Then I had a quick dinner. Then I tucked in the boys and gave them a story. The year was 1773. Privates Matt and Travis were fighting under the command of General Washington. Cold, tired, hungry, their uniforms in tatters, they camped for the winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They slept in log huts, wedged between two mountains: Mount Joy and Mount Misery. Morning till night, bitter cold winds sliced through the mountains and barreled through the chinks in the huts. Food was scarce; only a third of the men had shoes. Whenever they walked outside, they left bloody footprints in the snow. Thousands died. But Matt and Travis held on. Finally, spring came. The troops got word that the British had retreated, and the French were coming to the aid of the colonists. Privates Matt and Travis knew from then on that they could live through anything. Mount Joy, Mount Misery. The end. Good night, boys. Night, Dad. I turned out the light and went and sat in front of the TV with Penny. Neither of us was really watching. She was reading a book and I was doing calculations in my head. By this time next week Bowerman would be worth $9 million. Cale—$6.6 million. Woodell, Johnson, Hayes, Strasser—each about $6 million. Fantasy numbers. Numbers that meant nothing. I never knew that numbers could mean so much, and so little, at the same time. “Bed?” Penny said. I nodded. I went around the house, turning off lights, checking doors. Then I joined her. For a long time we lay in the dark. It wasn’t over. Far from it. The first part, I told myself, is behind us. But it’s only the first part. I asked myself: What are you feeling? It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t relief. If I felt anything, it was... regret? Good God, I thought. Yes. Regret. Because I honestly wished I could do it all over again. I fell asleep for a few hours. When I woke it was cold and rainy. I went to the window. The trees were dripping water. Everything was mist and fog. The world was the same as it had been the day before, as it had always been. Nothing had changed, least of all me. And yet I was worth $178 million. I showered, ate breakfast, drove to work. I was at my desk before anyone else.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Instead, she said, Mr. Morimoto would meet me for tea in my hotel’s revolving restaurant. Tomorrow morning. I went to bed early, slept fitfully. Dreams of car chases, prison, duels—the same dreams that always plagued me the night before a big meet, or date, or exam. I rose at dawn, ate a breakfast of raw egg poured over hot rice, and some grilled fish, and washed it down with a pot of green tea. Then, reciting memorized passages from How to Do Business with the Japanese, I shaved my pale jaws. I cut myself once or twice, and had trouble stopping the bleeding. I must have been a sight. Finally I put on my suit and shambled onto the elevator. As I pressed the button for the top floor I noticed that my hand was white as bone. Morimoto arrived on time. He was about my age, but far more mature, more self-assured. He wore a rumpled sport coat and had a kind of rumpled face. We sat at a table by the window. Immediately, before the waiter came to take our order, I launched into my pitch, saying everything I’d vowed not to say. I told Morimoto